by rich r » Fri Sep 15, 2006 4:17 pm
The answer is stupid, but, well, here you go;
'Real' surfers always surfed custom boards, or at least boards made by the 'right' surfboard company.
I can't remember which came first - the pop-outs from China, or the epoxy boards, but both got slagged by surfers.
Pop-outs were reviled because a human hand never touched them and they were the China-made die-cast fake Hot Wheels of surf boards.
Epoxy for a number of reasons at first - new technology always 'scares' people, epoxy was heavier, the first epoxy boards were pretty crap, epoxy flew in the face of 'tradition', and BIC and NSP were seen almost alongside the pop-out boards; meant to be mass-market, cheap, undermining the soul of surfing and the secret desire every surfer has of keeping the community small and the breaks unpopulated.
On the second point, BIC and NSP have taken a Hollister mass-market approach to their boards to get them out there. Heavy on the marketing and catering to the 'kook crowd', and the new surfers who haven't been brought up in the culture (for good or bad).
Just as a 'true' surfer would never wear a Hollister shirt, up until a year or so ago, you'd never find one using an NSP or BIC, other than *maybe* to teach someone else how to surf.
i havent used it yet though. but when i was buying it i was chosing between bic or nsp and i found this: 
